Prince Harry has a unique understanding of hatred and the media. In a recent interview, he revealed that he saw the capitol riots coming and warned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do something about it. Here’s what’s going on.
UK Media On Blast
Harry’s never had a positive relationship with the UK media. You can go back to how it treated his mother, Princess Diana, both in life and in her tragic death. He had a spotlight on him for decades, and things only got worse when he married an American. The UK media’s cruelty is partially what drove him and Meghan Markle out of the country.
“I learned from a very young age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily in line with the incentives of the truth,” the Duke of Sussex recently told Wired. He accuses the British press of conflating “profit with purpose and news with entertainment.” Harry believes the press turns fact-based news into gossip.
He pulls no punches. Harry, accurately, blames the media for the death of his mother. When discussing the transformation of news into profit, he says “I know the story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness, and obviously, I’m determined not to lose the mother of my children to the same thing.” This isn’t the first time Harry has mentioned his mother and Markle’s relationship to the media in the same breath.
Talking On Twitter
He called the internet “defined by hate, division, and lies… that can’t be right.” As he discusses misinformation, Harry told an interesting story about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6th. I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged.” Dorsey received the email the day before the capitol riots but never responded. Harry then reveled the two have not communicated since that last email sent on the 5th.
Twitter is often a breeding ground for hate groups and misinformation. The social media platform’s algorithm rewards divisive responses with exposure, so users are incentivized to be cruel. Harry is an expert on cruelty and misinformation, so Dorsey ought to have taken heed of his words.
Damning Indictment
It’s unclear what Dorsey could have done on the eve of the riot, but Harry’s email proves he knew something would happen, and chose to do nothing about it. Neither Harry nor Markle have Twitter pages anymore, and that’s probably great news for the sake of their mental health.
